Expected Surge in Turbine Manufacturing Complicated by Rising Costs, Uncertain Demand

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Excerpt.  Link to full article:  https://rbnenergy.com/i-will-wait-expected-surge-in-turbine-manufac...

Thursday, 05/29/2025 Published by: Lisa Shidler  rbnenergy.com

This may be the best time ever to be a manufacturer of natural gas turbines. The U.S. seems poised for a sharp increase in power demand in the coming years and order books are filling up, but it’s not all smooth sailing and significant headwinds remain. In today’s RBN blog, we will explore how rising costs, supply-chain constraints, long lead times and tariffs could impact turbine manufacturing and complicate efforts to expand gas-fired power generation. 

As we said recently in Only Happy When It Rains, there’s been a lot of talk recently about needing more electricity to meet the growing demands of electrification and data centers. Developers have been considering the full spectrum of power-generation sources — ranging from renewables to nuclear — but almost everyone understands that gas-fired plants will be a big part of the solution. A number of major gas producers and just about every big midstreamer with a gas pipeline network have been talking up their plans to serve these new power plants, and several gas-fired projects — many tied directly to data centers — have already been announced (see We Should Be Friends, Part 1 and Part 2). That has made acquiring the turbines needed to run a gas-fired power plant a priority — and a bigger challenge than it might appear.